112 Cognitive Frailty, Physical Frailty and Loneliness Predicts the Incidence of Falls among Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Although frailty is a well-known risk factor for falls, the concomitant effects of physical frailty and cognitive impairments or known as cognitive frailty (CF), in predicting the incidence falls is not established.

In a prospective cohort study, we examined the predictive ability of CF towards the incidence of falls among older adults from Malaysian Towards Useful Aging (TUA) study. A total of 400 participants aged > 60 years were successfully followed up at five years. Participants were interviewed on their sociodemographic data, medical and falls history. Assessments to examine cognitive function, physical functional status, psychosocial and dietary intake were conducted. Univariate analysis was performed for every variable, followed by hierarchical binary logistic regression (BLR) analysis to identify the ability of CF in predicting the incidence of falls.

After adjusting for the covariates, CF (Odd Ratio (OR) = 2.976, 95% Confidence Interval (CI): 1.776-4.987, p<0.05), physical frailty (OR = 2.882, 95% CI: 1.187-6.999, p<0.05), women (OR = 2.229, 95% CI: 1.362-3.648, p<0.05), and loneliness (OR = 1.329, 95% CI: 1.028-1.718, p<0.05) were the significant predictors for the incidence of falls.

Both cognitive and physical frailty were significant predictors of future falls among community-dwelling older adults. It is important to provide an effective intervention to prevent falls in this high-risk group of older adults.

This study was funded by the Long-term Research Grant Scheme (LGRS) provided by the Ministry of Education Malaysia (LRGS/BU/2012/UKM-UKM/K/01) and Grand Challenge Grant funded by the National University of Malaysia (DCP-2017-002/1).